


The Only Way

by MeetMeInTheWoods



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mandalorian Culture, The Helmet Stays On, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:22:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23435347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeetMeInTheWoods/pseuds/MeetMeInTheWoods
Summary: Before the Mandalorian crossed paths with the foundling, his life had been (if at times brutally violent and occasionally lonely) exceedingly simple and self-sufficient.Everything is different now.Unfortunately, he doesn't have time to reconcile himself to his new reality because staying one step ahead of the Imperial remnant is requiring his full attention.When the Mandalorian is captured by Moff Gideon, it's up to Cara and the Covert to launch a rescue.Even a Mandalorian needs help from others once in a while.
Comments: 53
Kudos: 207





	1. Out of Options

**Author's Note:**

> Two warnings for you all:
> 
> 1\. I'm part of that very small fraction of the world's population that knows nothing about Star Wars, so please forgive any inaccuracies (and thank you, Wookieepedia!).
> 
> 2\. This is my very first attempt at fanfiction AND posting any sort of writing for public consumption, so I'd love to hear any feedback or criticisms that you may have. :)
> 
> This story deviates from the series around Episode 7/8. I felt the season ended somewhat abruptly and could have done with some additional story line and character development - I mean, 8 episodes isn't nearly enough, especially in this new world of lockdowns, quarantines, and Stay at Home orders.
> 
> This is the result of that imagining. We'll see how it goes...

The Mandalorian peered out from around the column and a cold fist closed around his chest. Storm troopers lined the street, more than he could count, blasters raised and aimed in their direction. In the middle of the intimidating force stood Moff Gideon, arms crossed. Patient. Waiting.

Din looked over at Cara, huddled behind the column beside his. “We’re pinned.”

“No shit,” she said with a grim smile that didn’t meet her eyes. She held a blaster in each hand. “So what’s the plan?”

“We can’t face them all, and I can’t fight them if I’m worrying about the kid the entire time. Take him and go back to the ship – he’ll be safe there. Hail the Covert on the ship’s comm system. Tell them that I sent you, that the foundling is under my protection, and they’ll help you. I’ll hold the Imps off as long as I can.”

“ _That’s_ your strategy? I’m not going to leave you, you idiot.”

“It’s the only way.”

Cara stared at him, unmoving, and he repeated the directive with more urgency. “Cara, you have to go. Now!”

“No. They’ll kill you.”

“They’ll kill us all if you don’t leave now.” Din added, “I have a plan.” It wasn’t a particularly good one, but she didn’t need to know that.

“Is it anything like your strategy?” Cara asked sarcastically, but he heard the loss of resolve in her voice. She had been in enough firefights to learn the value of retreat.

The IG-11 beside Din asked, “What shall I do?”

“You’re with me. We’ll draw their fire. Distract them long enough for Cara to get the kid back to the ship.”

There was a short pause as its newly programmed nurse functions overrode its base commands. “This…is acceptable.”

Din touched his vambrace and the carrier beside him opened, revealing the small green child inside. He stared up at Din with huge black eyes, his long ears trembling. With fear? After so much time together, Din still wasn’t sure what to think.

Cara reached in and pulled the child out, tucking him snugly behind her chest plate. He reached for Din with a quiet squeak and something in Din’s chest pounded hard. He had to resist the urge to take him from her.

“You understand what’s happening,” Din said to the child. It was almost a plea. He repeated, “This is the only way. I’ll meet you both back at the ship.”

The foundling chirped again and Din, knowing that it was unwise to make dubious promises to a being that could control objects with his mind, said anyway, “I promise.”

He ripped a cord from around his neck and handed it to Cara. It was a silver charm of a Mythosaur. “Here. Show this to the Covert when you find them. They’ll know who it’s from.”

Din closed the carrier and peered around the column once more. The storm troopers were advancing as one line now, closing in on them, less than twenty yards away. They were out of time. 

“It’s time to go,” Din said. He touched his vambrace once more, programming the carrier to stay a safe distance behind him while still remaining visible. In order for this to work, Gideon needed to believe the child was still with him.

Cara looked over at him and he was started by the emotion in her expression. “Don’t die before I get back, Mando.”

He could only nod, aware of how much more hopeless his situation would be without her. There was more to say, he knew, but they had no time left.

As one, they stepped out from behind the columns. Without looking, Din fired one blaster shot into the head of a storm trooper to his left and used his forward momentum to knock another trooper to the ground with a fierce kick. On his right, IG-11 advanced in step with him, its robotic arms spinning rapidly as it unleashed a hail of blaster fire. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cara dart around the corner of the cantina, and noted with grim satisfaction that she was drawing considerably less fire than he and the droid.

A pulse of blaster fire caught him in the left pauldron, knocking him back into the arms of a nearby trooper. Din grabbed the trooper by the helmet and slammed him into the ground, firing a shot directly into the helmet. Another trooper grabbed him from behind, pulling him backward. He dropped to his knee, throwing his assailant off-balance, and hurled him over his head and into a nearby trooper.

They kept coming. Din remained on one knee and engaged the flame projector on his vambrace, sweeping the horizon with fire. The air filled with screams and the smell of charred metal and flesh – they were men, after all, beneath all of that armor. Nearby, IG-11 had converted one of its arms into a vibroblade and was holding its own in hand to hand combat with a few troopers who had managed to escape the fiery assault.

Too quickly, Din’s flame projector fizzled out. He got to his feet and backed up toward the cantina, still firing his blaster into the smoke. Returning laser fire punched the dirt around him, but the smoke was obscuring the vision of the storm troopers and making it difficult to hit their target. _As if their aim could get any worse_ , he thought.

Out of the corner of his eye, Din spied an e-web heavy repeating blaster sitting unattended at the edge of the town square. The body of a storm trooper, likely its intended operator, lay on the ground nearby. For the first time, Din had a glimmer of hope that he might get out of this alive. He lifted the e-web blaster off of its tripod with a grunt. It was heavy and awkward, but it would provide him with unlimited firepower as long as it remained connected to its power generator.

He fired indiscriminately, laying down a wave of firepower that struck down every trooper in the immediate vicinity. 

Out of the chaos and clearing smoke, a dark figure emerged. Moff Gideon. His blaster was aimed at Din.

Din pivoted as quickly as he could with the unwieldy weapon to redirect its fire toward Gideon. Unexpectedly, Gideon’s eyes shifted to a lower horizon, something just beside the Mandalorian, and his blaster moved to match. Din had a split-second of realization – _the generator_ – but not nearly enough time to do anything about what was about to happen.

There was a shot, a loud _bang_ that seemed to shake the very planet. An explosion, strangely distant. The last thing Din was aware of was being lifted off of his feet, hanging in the air for an impossibly long moment, a forceful impact…and then darkness.

* * *

Cara had never run from a fight before and doing so made her feel like a coward. She knew it was the right thing to do – the _only_ thing to do, under the circumstances – but she had left Din back there to fend off an entire Imperial army. Where was the honor in that?

As if sensing her doubts, the little green child tucked snugly behind her breast plate squirmed and squeaked.

“I know,” she said irritably, fighting the irrational feeling that she was being judged. “I don’t like it, either.”

Cara peered around the corner of the building and once against studied the Razor Crest, sitting unassumingly in the shipyard several hundred yards away. She had been watching it for the past few minutes to make sure there weren’t any storm troopers lying in wait for them – but she knew that every second she waited was one more second that Din was fighting out there, alone. She couldn’t delay any longer.

And yet…she found herself hesitating. She didn’t know how to fly the Razor Crest. She barely knew how to work the comms system. If Din was unable to hold them off – she hated that thought but had been in enough battles to understand the odds – it would only be a matter of time before Moff Gideon realized that the foundling wasn’t in the carrier. They would head straight for the ship, Cara realized. And she and the kid would be trapped within its bowels, praying that the ground security protocols that she knew nothing about would hold the troopers back until help arrived. _If_ help arrived.

On top of that, Cara wasn’t really a sit-and-wait kind of person. 

She made a quick decision and turned back toward the Marketplace. Their best chance of survival, she realized, was to find the Covert here on Navarro and rally the Mandalorians to come to Din’s aid.

She didn’t let herself think about what might happen if they chose instead to abandon him based on the carnage that his actions had unleashed on them a few months ago.


	2. A Bread Crumb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cara Dune seeks help from the Mandalorians, while Moff Gideon continues his hunt to acquire the Asset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first time I've ever written fan fiction and posting it on a public forum for anyone to read is pretty daunting...but here's Chapter 2, for your reading pleasure. Any feedback or advice is welcomed!

As the smoke from the explosion cleared and revealed the prone body of the Mandalorian in the dirt, a thin smile spread across Moff Gideon’s face. He motioned to his remaining storm troopers and they approached slowly, blasters drawn and aimed. They knew enough of the Mandalorian to know that as long as he lived, he was dangerous.

When they had surrounded him, Gideon turned his attention to the metal, egg-shaped carrier that hovered near the Mandalorian’s still form.

He had waited so long for this moment.

The carrier was still closed. Gideon turned to a nearby IG-88 and said, “Open it.” Because it was an assassin droid, he added, “We need its contents alive.”

IG-88 obliged, using a metal digit to burn through the seam of the carrier. After what felt like an eternity, its flaps peeled back. Gideon peered inside and immediately felt his innards constrict with a nameless, violent rage.

“It appears to be empty,” the droid declared. In a cold fury, Gideon shot it through the head with a blaster round. Before it hit the ground, Gideon aimed at the empty carrier and fired again. It exploded in a flash of short-lived flames.

Gideon stood still for a moment, working to get his anger under control. He understood immediately what had happened – he had let his guard down, let his excitement at getting so close to retrieving the Asset get the best of him. He had stopped thinking strategically and the Mandalorian had taken advantage of that.

None of the storm troopers dared to speak. A thin plume of black smoke drifted up from the charred metal remains of the droid.

“The shock trooper,” Gideon finally hissed. “Where is she?”

No answer.

He turned to the nearest captain. “She’s likely fled to the ship. Take your troops and find her. She has the Asset.”

As the storm troopers peeled off from the group, Gideon turned his attention to the Mandalorian with a renewed interest. He lay on the ground unmoving, but the rise and fall of the gleaming Beskar cuirass told Gideon that he was breathing, at least. Other than that, it was impossible to tell what injuries might be hidden beneath the helmet and armor.

“What do you want to do with him?” one of the troopers asked, prodding the Mandalorian with a boot.

“Bring him. He will be of use yet.”

As Gideon stalked out of the town square, the glint of silver nearby caught his eye. It was the IG-11 that had been fighting alongside the Mandalorian. It was leaning against a nearby column in a crumpled heap, its lights flickering intermittently.

An idea formed in his mind.

* * *

Cara had found the entrance to the tunnel system that ran beneath the streets of Nevarro with relative ease. It was located at the back of the Marketplace, in a narrow alley past the meat and produce stands. The shadowed lane was quiet and lonely, and Cara didn’t have to wait long to ensure that she wasn’t being followed.

She was, however, surprised to find the entrance to the tunnels unguarded. Under normal circumstances she may have staked the entrance for a while to ensure there wasn’t any danger, but urgency propelled her forward and she entered cautiously, one hand resting on the blaster holstered at her hip. The foundling remained quiet behind her breastplate and she said to him, “Keep your eyes open.”

Cara descended a short series of uneven stone steps and in the space of a breath, the inky darkness had swallowed any hint of light. She switched on the scope of her blaster and studied the floor of the tunnel. She had been a tracker in her former life and was able to identify the faint impression of a boot with a heavy tread that resembled the Mandalorian’s. Without any other way of knowing whose tracks they belonged to – any number of boot-wearing fugitives could live in these tunnels – she started to follow them deeper into the tunnel. After what seemed like an eternity of following the tracks down numerous offshoots of the main tunnel - but had really been less than an hour - she realized that she was lost.

“Let’s hope we find this Covert,” she muttered aloud. “Otherwise we’ll be down here for days trying to find our way out.”

Without warning, there was a shift in the air behind her. She started to turn but someone grabbed a fistful of hair and wrenched her head back.

Suddenly there was a blade at her throat, followed by a snarled question. “Who are you?”

Cara swallowed, feeling the cold steel against her neck. Her first instinct had been to react with violence but the sound of the voice behind her, made distorted by a modulator, stilled her immediately. She had found them; or at least, one of them. Hopefully, one of the more reasonable ones.

“My name is Cara Dune,” she said, and steeled herself against the possibility of an even more hostile reaction to her next words. “I’ve come on behalf of Din Djarin.”

The man behind her didn’t budge, didn’t so much as breathe. Slowly, so as not to alarm him, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the charm of the Mythosaur. “He gave me this to show you.”

After a moment, her accoster released her. She stumbled forward, turning quickly to find a large Mandalorian with a vibroblade in his gloved hand. He studied her behind an impassive helmet. He was large, Cara noted, taller even than Din, and his Beskar armor was a steely blue color, tarnished and dinged. No stranger to battle.

Now he said gruffly, “You shouldn’t be down here.”

 _No shit_. “I wouldn’t be, if there was any other way.”

“Even if you are who you say you are, I’d never help that traitor.”

It was the response she’d half-expected. She said mildly, “I know that some trouble happened here a few months back.”

“Some trouble?” he repeated. “We were almost annihilated in the firestorm that he caused. Nearly half of our Covert were killed in a single night. Afterward, we had to relocate farther into the tunnels than ever before, and now we hide in the shadows down here like rats. All because he got greedy and decided to steal a bounty and keep the reward.”

He didn’t know, Cara realized with a start.

Typical of Din to expend absolutely no effort to defend his actions to anyone.

As if on cue, a pair of pointed ears emerged from behind her breastplate.

The Mandalorian stared at it. “What is that thing?”

“That ‘thing’ is the bounty that Din refused to hand over. And it’s why he’s currently fighting an extremely one-sided battle while I’m down here looking for you guys. Look, I can explain all of this later, but right now we’re out of time.” Cara took a deep breath. “You helped him once before. Will you do so again?”

The Mandalorian didn’t appear to be impressed by her plea. “Who is the fight with?”

“Imps. Headed by an old ISB officer named Gideon.”

The Mandalorian’s demeanor changed, just slightly. A squaring of the shoulders, an almost imperceptible straightening. “I know the name. I don’t suppose this has anything to do with the firefight going on in the town square right now?”

“Yes,” Cara replied impatiently. “Look, I know I’m asking a lot. You don’t know me. I’m not one of you. And clearly you aren’t a huge fan of Din’s right now. But there are good reasons for his actions, ones he’ll never be able to explain to you and the rest of your Covert if he dies today.”

The Mandalorian studied her for what felt like an impossibly long moment, then said, “It’s not my decision to make. Come with me. I will take you to the Armorer.”

* * *

Moff Gideon sat in the Captain’s chair of his ship, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. He stared out at the arid desert in front of him, glaringly white under the harsh afternoon light of the twin suns overhead, analyzing the possible consequences of what he had set in action.

The stormtroopers that he’d sent to the Mandalorian’s ship had come back empty-handed.

It made him sick to think about how close he’d been to acquiring the Asset today. The Mandalorian and his ragtag team – if you could even call them that – had been ambushed in the town square today, outnumbered a hundred to one. Gideon had claimed every tactical advantage, from manpower and weaponry to the higher ground to the element of surprise. And yet, somehow, the Asset had slipped through his fingers once again.

The Asset, in the hands of the Imperial Army, could change the tide of the revolution.

In his hands, it would change everything.

Beyond his desire to attain the Asset, Gideon had to admit that this had become personal to him. He had been bested by the Mandalorian too many times. It was strange, he had often reflected, how deeply intertwined the trajectory of his life had become with that of the orphan boy from all those years ago.

He should have killed him on that godforsaken planet when he’d had the chance.

Gideon forced himself to focus on the present. All was not lost. He had left a bread crumb back at the cantina for the rebel shock trooper, should she return to try to rescue the Mandalorian. He had a feeling that she would. And if she did, his little gift would lead her – and the Asset that was bound to be with her – straight to him.

In the meantime, he would try to obtain information about their whereabouts in a different way.

Gideon was not generally an enthusiast of interrogation techniques, but he couldn’t deny that he would derive some pleasure from this one.

As if on cue, the door to the cockpit slid open and a trooper rapped hesitantly on the door frame.

Gideon turned to him. “Is our guest ready for visitors?”

The trooper nodded and Gideon stood up.

* * *

Cara and a dozen Mandalorians ran toward the town square. The large one matched her step for step, a curved knife in his gloved hand.

“This is all of you?” she had asked in disbelief when the Mandalorian had taken her to the relocated Covert deep within the tunnels. “Where are the others?”

“This is all that’s left,” the Armorer had replied as she stoked the forge, and even if there had been time to ask questions, her tone had left no room for them.

The Mandalorians were a strange people, Cara knew. Nomadic clans of warriors interspersed throughout the galaxy, with war and battle being the focal points of their culture. Cara had learned to keep her distance from them early on; her past experience had proven them to be humorless, ruthless, and dangerous.

And now here she was, running with a pack of Mandalorians, risking her life to save one.

Intellectually, Cara knew that the battle would have ended long before she could hope to return with help. Firefights rarely lasted more than minutes, even when it involved evenly matched forces. But despite that knowledge, even as she steeled herself to find the worst at the cantina, her heart sank as they approached.

It was so quiet.

Whatever was going to happen had happened without her there, and she had not heard from Din.

In the tunnels, the Armorer had given her a leather sling to carry the foundling across her chest. Now, Cara wondered if she should ask one of the Mandalorians to stay back with the child in case there were things that he shouldn’t see on the battlefield – namely, the body of the closest thing to a father he’d likely ever had. But Din had entrusted her with the task of keeping him safe and the idea of the child leaving her sight made her uneasy and left a bitter taste in her mouth.

They turned the corner and found themselves in the square.

The battle was indeed over, and it had been a bloodbath. The bodies of stormtroopers littered the ground, charred and piled up on each other like pieces of bone-white kindling. Smoke rose from several points in the square and the smell of scorched metal and burnt flesh lingered in the heavy air.

 _Din did all of this_ , Cara thought, feeling a strange mixture of awe and dread at the realization that the Mandalorian had almost single-handedly caused this carnage. If he had gone down, it hadn’t been without a fight.

The large Mandalorian said to the others, “Spread out and clear the area. He could still be here.”

Cara scanned her surroundings as the Mandalorians dispersed. The square was eerily quiet. She didn’t see Din anywhere, and the thought both relieved and terrified her. She noticed a dark, circular scar in the dirt on the far side of the square and walked over to investigate. There had clearly been an explosion here; a large one, judging by the radius of the scorched earth.

Her heart pounded when she realized that she was staring at a wide swath of disrupted dirt. Something had been dragged away from this area. Before she could call over to the Mandalorians, she heard a faint, distorted chirp.

The droid. It was leaning against the wall of the cantina.

Cara ran over and knelt beside the IG unit. The large Mandalorian followed her. The droid's head swiveled toward her, went too far, corrected itself. Red lights blinked haphazardly across its face. Once of its legs had been shot off and black oily fluid dripped from the stump onto the dusty ground.

“IG. What happened?” Cara asked. “Where is he?”

The droid sputtered and beeped, its mechanized chirps growing increasingly distorted. “Shock trooper.”

“Yes,” she said, and if the Mandalorian beside her was surprised at the revelation, he gave no indication. She repeated her question, knowing the droid was about to power down. “Where is the Mandalorian?”

The droid lifted a mangled arm and opened its hand to reveal a small silver object. “I. Believe this is. For you.”

The Mandalorian took the item and studied it. A red light flashed at its tip.

Cara asked, “What is that? A tracking fob?”

“Yes. For our mutual friend, looks like.”

“What? There’s a bounty out for him?”

The Mandalorian shook his head. “No. This is an imperial tracking fob.”

Cold dread trickled through Cara’s veins. “So they’ve what – they’ve taken him?”

“Yes. And they’re inviting us to come and get him.”

* * *

Consciousness returned to the Mandalorian slowly. There had been glimmers of awareness before this moment, mostly accompanied by pain, but they had been fleeting and too haphazard to make any sense of. There had been the sensation of being roughly carried, dragged across the earth. A change in the quality of the light hitting his eyelids.

Now, awareness returned completely, and Din found himself in a dimly lit cell. It was a small space, dark and cold, and the door to the cell was heavily barred. Beyond the bars, Din could only see a shadowy corridor that stretched further than the light would allow him to make out.

His head pounded and his entire body ached. His arms had been forced above his head, his wrists cuffed together and attached to a thick length of chain hanging from the ceiling. His shoulders strained with the weight of his body and, awake now, he brought his feet under him to relieve some of the pressure. Something wet trickled down the back of his neck.

His armor and helmet were still in place, which he found odd.

Odder still was the fact that he was alive in the first place. He had expected to die in the town square; he had not considered the possibility of capture. The only reason that he could think of that would explain why Moff Gideon hadn’t killed him on the spot was the same shred of hope that he clung to for himself – they still didn’t have the child. Which meant that his plan had worked, and the kid, and Cara, were alive and safe, possibly already in the care of the Covert.

Before he could ponder this further, a voice came from the darkness.

“You’re awake.”

Din turned his head toward the voice and the world spun dizzyingly. Moff Giden emerged from the inky depths of the cell, coming to stand a few feet in front of his prisoner. “I was beginning to think you were dead.”

When Din didn’t respond, he said, “Frankly, I’m surprised that blast didn’t kill you. The Beskar took the brunt of the impact. Ironic that my bounty for a contract that you never honored ended up saving your life.” He took a breath and Din read the cold, barely contained fury in his face. “That’s fine. I need you alive. For now.”

Din swallowed. His throat was dry. He asked, “Where am I?”

“My ship. That’s all you need to know.” Gideon moved closer. “You understand why you’re here, Din Djarin.”

Din flexed his wrists, testing the strength of the cuffs. They would be difficult to break, even if he was at full strength, and he was nowhere near it. He noted the blaster that Gideon wore on his hip. If he could just get close enough….

“We found your ship. It was empty.”

That was a surprise to Din.

Gideon said, “Tell me where the Asset is.”

“What is he to you? What do you want from him?”

Gideon smiled coldly. “I could ask the same of you, Mandalorian. At one point, this was nothing more than another contract to you. And yet in the last few months, you’ve turned your back on the Guild, lost your source of livelihood, caused the destruction of your own kind, and have been on the run from every bounty hunter and Imperial ship in the galaxy ever since." He added, "Now, of course, you find yourself here, in a less than ideal situation.”

“He’s just a child.”

“He’s a weapon.”

“Children are not weapons.”

“You and I both know that isn’t true.”

Din took a deep breath. “I don’t know where he is. I wouldn’t tell you if I did. You might as well kill me and get it over with.”

“You’d like that, I know – but I’m not yet convinced. Your little ruse back there bought your friend some time, it’s true. But we’ll find them eventually. There isn’t a galaxy in the universe distant enough for them to hide from the Imperial Army.”

Din knew from the lack of vibration underfoot that Gideon’s ship – assuming he was indeed on it – was stationary. He asked, “Then why haven’t we left Nevarro?”

Gideon ignored the question. “You’re not getting off my ship alive. You know that already. Tell us what we want to know and you can have a quick, painless death – a death befitting a Mandalorian warrior. We can offer the same to your shock trooper, once she is found.”

Din’s vision wavered and he realized that he was close to losing consciousness again. He thought of the kid, of the promise he had made back at the cantina.

“Otherwise – well, there are those here who can provide you with a death so agonizingly slow that you’ll have forgotten what it means to be alive long before the blessing of death finally comes.”


	3. A Waiting Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cara tries to launch a rescue attempt with the help of the Covert. Meanwhile, Moff Gideon is determined to extract the information he seeks from the Mandalorian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando doesn't fare well in this chapter, I'm afraid...be prepared for a lot of angst. :)

By dusk, Cara and the Mandalorians had followed the tracking fob to Moff Gideon’s ship. The Imperial Star Destroyer was a typical craft for an Imperial officer of Gideon’s status, and it was docked in a remote area of the Nevarro desert, several hours away from the farthest reaches of the city. A few stormtroopers patrolled its perimeter but otherwise there was little indication of life or movement. It appeared that Moff Gideon was in no hurry to leave the planet.

Cara had been ready to go in immediately, knowing that Din was more than likely already on board, but the Mandalorians had resisted her urges.

“We can’t storm an Imperial ship,” the large Mandalorian had told her as they lay on their bellies behind a large outcropping of rocks on a neighboring ridge. “It’ll be crawling with troopers. We wouldn’t get past the landing gear.”

Cara knew that he was right. They’d be no good to Din – or the foundling – if they were dead. In the end, they had left a few Mandalorians to watch the ship and the rest of them had returned to the Covert on speeder bikes to formulate a plan.

Back in the enclave, the Armorer had pointed out that Moff Gideon would almost certainly have men watching the Razor Crest; and Cara had agreed to spend the night in the tunnels with the Covert – if only for the sake of the child, who was now perched on a nearby table drinking a mug of bone broth.

They stood around the forge without speaking, watching the Armorer work in the fire. The flames danced high in the open furnace, casting eerie shadows on the strange, metal faces huddled around it. Cara looked from one to the other, tension mounting within her. They had been there for hours, and they still had no concrete plan. Talking to the Mandalorians was like talking to several steel drums.

Every second spent not doing _something_ felt like an impossibly long and wasted opportunity.

“You’re frustrated,” the Armorer said as she lifted a large piece of smoldering iron from the flames with a pair of tongs. She had a strange, detached way of speaking that had Cara constantly on edge. “Why?”

“Why?” Cara repeated. “Because we’re all standing around watching you make cooking utensils while Mando is on some Imperial ship most likely being tortured to death, that’s why.”

“He can handle it,” said the Mandalorian beside her. “He’s been through worse. Most of us have.”

Cara stared at him in disbelief. “Clearly you’ve never been interrogated by an IT-O. I was a rebel shock trooper in a previous life. I’ve seen what those things can do.”

“We cannot rush into battle without a plan of attack,” the Armorer said, putting down her tools. “Before, when you fought with the rebels, you favored a strategy of sudden and overwhelming assault because you had the numbers to do so. Your first instinct is to take same approach here, but you must see how that’s not possible. There are so few of us left, and there is much to preserve.”

She turned to the table. “Now, I would like to see the foundling that has brought such trouble upon us.”

Reluctantly, Cara picked up the child and let the Armorer draw near.

The Armorer studied the foundling, who stared back with an unblinking gaze, his head slightly cocked. His ears trembled. Cara wondered, not for the first time, what he made of all of this. It had been less than twenty-four hours since the battle in the town square, but it was probably the longest he had been separated from Mando since they’d met.

“You say he can move things with his mind?”

“Yes. I haven’t actually seen him do it, but Din – Mando – has. The kid stopped an adult Mudhorn from killing him a few months ago.”

“Ah. The mudhorn,” the Armorer said with a small nod, as if something had clicked into place in her mind. She reached a gloved finger out to the foundling, who in turn lifted a small clawed hand toward her. She stopped abruptly.

“Do you know where he is from?”

“No. I’ve never seen his kind before, and we never came across anyone who had.” A sudden hope pricked within Cara and she asked, “Do you?”

“No,” the Armorer murmured thoughtfully. “But it will be important for you to find out.”

The Armorer looked at the Mandalorians. “Din Djarin made the right decision to recover this child from the Imperial remnant. The bloodshed that resulted here on Nevarro was a necessary consequence of that action. By our Creed, Djarin must return the child to its own kind and raise him as his own until he comes of age. Aliit ori’shya tal’din.This is the Way.”

As one, the tribe responded in solemn intonation. “This is the Way.”

It sent chills down Cara’s spine. It appeared that Din had just become a father; that is, if he survived long enough to hear the news.

The Armorer turned to Cara. “We will help you rescue Din Djarin. But first, we need something from the cantina.”

* * *

Moff Gideon watched the Inquisitor thrust the electric baton into the Mandalorian’s ribs once again, just beneath the cuirass. The thrust itself would have been enough to hurt.

The Mandalorian remained, for the most part, silent. The only indication of pain was the sound of his breath catching beneath his helmet, a ragged gasp.

The Inquisitor pulled the baton away and Gideon asked, “Where is the Asset?”

The Mandalorian said nothing.

Another prod of the baton, this time longer. Another release. The Mandalorian slumped against the chains that held him upright, his body twitching with the dissipating shocks. Blue arcs of electricity sparked against his Beskar armor.

“Your ship is still planet-side, so the trooper must still be here on Nevarro. Where is she? Has she sought out the Covert?”

Again, silence. The Inquisitor looked at Gideon, yellow eyes impassive against a pale white face.

“Do it,” he said. “Make it last this time.”

And he did. The air tingled with electricity and the Mandalorian finally cried out, his gloved hands forming clenched fists in the cuffs. His body shuddered so intensely it seemed he might break apart.

After what seemed like an eternity, the Inquisitor pulled the baton away and the Mandalorian fell limply, his chest heaving.

The IT-O, one of the infamous torture droids employed by Imperial Inquisitors, placed a metal prong against the Mandalorian’s neck. After a pause, it reported, “Heart rate is elevated, but vitals remain relatively stable.”

The Inquisitor jabbed his prisoner again, eliciting a strangled hiss of pain.

Gideon asked, “Is it really worth it?”

The chains rattled overhead as the Mandalorian struggled to stay on his feet. His head bowed and for a moment Gideon thought he had passed out.

When he spoke, it was unexpected. His voice was raspy from pain and the words came out haltingly. “Jawas…have done…worse than you.”

“Ah. Well, we are just getting started here.”

The Inquisitor asked, “Shall I remove his helmet?”

Gideon noticed the sudden tensing of his prisoner’s body. He let the question linger in the air for a long time before replying, “No.”

He stepped closer. He didn’t need to see the Mandalorian’s eyes to understand the question there. “You’re wondering why we would leave your helmet on. Isn’t the point of torture to break the subject?”

There was no response.

“I removed the helmet of a Mandalorian once. I might as well have shot him through the heart with a blaster – he died as soon as I saw his face. In that moment, I realized what I had taken from him. Not just his armor, not just his pride – but his very identity. Without that helmet, without the precious _creed_ that he held so dear, he was nothing. He was without hope, without reason to live.”

The Mandalorian’s head fell forward but Gideon grabbed the brim of the helmet and forced it back up, staring into the black of his prisoner’s visor. “Torture is most effective if the victim maintains some semblance of hope. I’m not ready to take that from you yet. I know who you are under that helmet, Djarin. Even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t care. All I care about is the Asset, and you refuse to tell me what I want to know. So, we have to continue this unpleasant business.”

The Mandalorian asked, “Are you going…to torture me…or just talk me to death?”

Gideon nodded at the Inquisitor to resume his work. 

* * *

Cara stood in the forge with the Armorer, staring at the heavy white helmet in her hands.

Years ago, she had sworn to herself that she would never don a helmet again. Helmets, armor, infantry boots and standard-issue blaster rifles – they were all of the entrapments of organized, militaristic combat and had become a physical representation of the worst parts of her. Often, she felt as if she had never really known herself until she had cast it aside and fled from it all.

The last time she’d fought as a shock trooper with the Rebellion had been in the Battle of Hoth, now six years ago. The battle had gone down in history as the single worst defeat suffered by the Alliance during the Galactic Civil War and experiencing it firsthand had been a gruesome and bloody affair worthy of that reputation. In the end, Cara had been the only trooper in her command left standing. She had scrubbed her skin for hours afterward to wash off all of the blood.

The Rebellion had eventually won the war, but at what cost?

The visceral flashbacks from that day tickled at the edges of her memory, but she forced them down. That was a rabbit hole that she could get lost in for hours, requiring large quantities of ale or spotchka to find her way out, if she wasn’t careful. It had happened before.

Now, she took a deep breath, forced the helmet down over her head, and turned to the Armorer. “How do I look?”

“Like a stormtrooper.”

“It stinks to high hell in here.”

“The man wearing it before you died a violent death, so that is to be expected.”

Cara had to admit that the Armorer had come up with a decent plan – at least, as decent of a plan as their circumstances would allow. Scavenge the armor from a dead stormtrooper and use it to walk right up the landing ramp of an Imperial Star Destroyer. Find Mando. Free Mando. Get off the ship without getting killed. All with a little distraction from the Mandalorians.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Armorer handed her a short metal instrument with a small nozzle at one end. “Here. This will emit a plasma beam that can cut through any metal besides Beskar. I suspect you will find it useful.”

“What about him?” Cara asked, looking over at the foundling. He lay sleeping on the table, wrapped in a rough blanket provided by one of the Mandalorians. It had been difficult to put him to sleep the night before – he had been agitated, aware of and clearly troubled by the absence of the Mandalorian. Just before he had finally fallen asleep, the air in the enclave had tingled with a strange, vibrating sensation that had made the hair on the back of Cara’s neck stand up.

Now the Armorer said, “He will go with the Mandalorians.”

“What?” Cara felt panic swell in her chest, surprising in both its speed and its intensity. “No. He stays with me.”

“The plan won’t work if he’s not with them. You know this.”

“Have them bring an empty carrier. Gideon won’t know he’s not there until it’s too late.”

“Do you really think the Moff will fall for the same trick twice?” the Armorer asked, not unkindly. “Regardless, you’d have no way of carrying the foundling with you without attracting attention. You’re trying to infiltrate an enemy ship. He’d be in greater danger with you.”

Cara was silent, fighting an inner struggle. She saw the truth in the Armorer’s words but every cell of her being resisted the idea of being separated from the child. She had promised Mando that she would keep him safe, and now she was to allow a group of relative strangers to carry him straight into a confrontation with Moff Gideon?

As if reading her mind, the Armorer said, “Din Djarin trusted us with _your_ lives. You must do the same.” She studied the foundling. “If all else fails, I have a feeling that he can defend himself better than any of us could.”

* * *

Din came to with a start. He had been dreaming of explosions and flames, of the stifling heat in the hatch that day, of the panicked and pain-filled screams echoing above him. Of the terror and uncertainty that had consumed him as he crouched in the dirt with his arms around his knees, completely helpless and waiting for death.

Not so different from now, really.

He had thought about escape, of course. He was still wearing his armor, though they had stripped him of his weapons, and during the last interrogation the Inquisitor had been well within Din’s reach several times. He could deal with the IT-O, too, with relative ease. The problem was the Moff. He was always there. Even if Din overpowered the Inquisitor, Gideon would shoot him before he had a chance to escape.

Din gingerly rolled his neck, grimacing with pain. The explosion back at the cantina had rocked him hard, and recent events hadn’t improved anything. He wasn’t at his best, and he was only going to get weaker the longer he remained Gideon’s prisoner, making the possibility of escape more and more unlikely.

He wondered where Cara and the foundling were. Gideon had said that the Razor Crest had been empty. It was easy for Din to believe that she had chosen to go straight to the Covert despite his instructions. Cara didn’t understand his ship – she had barely spent any time aboard it – and she probably didn’t trust that its security defenses would hold against an Imperial onslaught. Knowing her as he did, he thought that it was much more likely that she’d decided to take matters into her own hands and seek the help of the Mandalorians directly.

Would they attempt to rescue him? After the battle with the Guild a few months ago, most of them likely saw him as selfish and reckless at best, or a traitor at worst. Even if they could be convinced to launch a rescue attempt, they might be deterred by their lack of numbers, lower today than any other time in their history. The Purge had all but wiped out their kind; as an ISB officer, Moff Gideon himself had played a starring role in that catastrophe.

Din hoped that the Mandalorians would leave him to his fate, and that they would convince Cara to do the same. He didn’t want anyone risking their lives for him anymore. 

Now, it was just a waiting game – waiting for a lapse in the Imps’ defense, a moment of weakness that might lend itself to an escape; or simply waiting for death. Din would do everything in his power to keep his promise to the kid, but ultimately, he was prepared to die.

The sound of footsteps alerted him to an approaching visitor. It was the Moff, and he appeared to be alone.

Gideon removed his blaster pistol from its holster and placed it on the ground outside of the cell. He let himself into the prison and locked the door behind him. 

They stared at each other for a long time. Gideon said, “Tell me where the Asset is.”

“You’re starting to repeat yourself.”

Gideon leaned against the wall of the cell, careful to remain out of Din’s reach, one hand resting on his empty holster. “I like to understand my adversaries, Din Djarin. Especially those who prove challenging. And so, I’ve asked myself many times why you show such dedication to this foundling.” He held up a hand as if to silence the Mandalorian, though Din had given no indication of being about to speak. “Of course, I know about the Mandalorian way of adopting abandoned children to raise them as their own. With such small numbers throughout the galaxy now, it’s one of the only ways that your kind can continue to eke out any semblance of a survival. But you have demonstrated time and time again a willingness to go to extraordinary measures, to sacrifice your own wellbeing, even the wellbeing of others, in order to keep this particular foundling safe. Why?”

Din didn’t respond.

“Is it because your own survival as a child was wholly dependent on the mercy of others? Had it not been for the Mandalorians, you would have died in the dirt that day with the rest of your people, on some backwoods planet that wasn’t even important enough to be named on the map. I was there that day, you know – fighting with the Republic.”

The revelation didn’t surprise Din. Gideon would have been much younger, of course – a junior officer, just starting his career, beginning to rise through the ranks.

Gideon said, “It could have been my grenade that killed your family. You and I might have stood just meters apart from each other. I suspect you don’t even remember what they looked like anymore. Your parents.”

Din’s hands clenched into fists.

“Death Watch may have saved your life that day, but was it truly mercy that they showed you? Did they not set you upon a trajectory of violence and unrest, condemning you to a lifetime of being both hunter and hunted? Without them, perhaps you could have enjoyed a peaceful existence.”

“I would never have known peace,” Din said coldly. “The Empire made sure of that when they slaughtered my family.” The Way of the Mandalore had been the only path for him after that, and he had been honored to walk it with Pre Viszla and his tribe.

Gideon nodded to himself, as if satisfied to confirm a long-held theory. “You and I are not so different, you know. We were both forced upon our destinies by the violent events of our youth, long before we ever had a choice in the matter. We both did what we had to in order to survive.”

“You and I are nothing alike.”

“You can tell yourself that. I’m not inclined to spend the time to convince you otherwise.”

“You’re an Imperial puppet. I’ve met a thousand of you – you’re all the same. Beholden to a corrupt and nebulous entity, seeking power for power’s sake, destroying anything that stands in your way.”

Gideon smiled. “You misjudge me, Djarin. It’s true that I have ambitions. I’m not yet where I intend to be. But I could care less about the trappings of power. Power is only useful in its illusion, in its ability to make others follow the man who wields it. True power is the ability to effect change. _That_ is what I am trying to achieve.”

“And the child? What does he mean to you in all of this?”

“The Asset? It means everything. You may think you have some idea of what you are in possession of, but you do not.”

“I know that he doesn’t belong to an Imperial remnant.”

“I agree. I have no intention of turning it over to them.” Sensing the Mandalorian’s surprise, Gideon continued, “The Empire, or what’s left of it, is full of weak-minded fools who have no ambitions beyond increasing their personal wealth and keeping their bellies full. They wax poetic about restoring the Empire to its former glory, but not a single one of them can devise a coherent strategy to do so, much less compel men to fight and die for the cause.”

Understanding dawned and Din said, “That’s what you need the child for.”

“I have plans for it that go far beyond the Rebellion.”

“What plans?”

Gideon smiled thinly. “You are not the one in the position to be asking questions, Djarin. I’ve been generous enough as it is. Tell me where he is, and perhaps I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Din remained silent.

“That’s what I thought. I will get the Inquisitor.”


	4. Brothers, Once

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cara and the Covert put their plan to rescue the Mandalorian into action...but are they too late? And are they risking too much?

The next morning, Cara and the Mandalorian studied Moff Gideon’s ship from the high ridge that they had scouted the night before. It was a large, wedge-shaped capital ship, and Cara knew from experience that it would be bristling with weapons emplacements, boarding craft, TIE line starfighters, and assault troops.

She wasn’t intimidated by much these days, but the idea of walking onto that ship in broad daylight with nothing more than a standard-issue blaster rifle and a laser was a bit daunting.

The Mandalorian beside her asked, “Do you want to go over the plan again?”

“No. The more we go over it, the worse it sounds.” 

He ignored that. “The detention center will be beneath the bridge, if that’s where they’re keeping him. You’ll have to go through the hanger bay, all the way to the rear of the ship to get there. Then, out the escape hatch just above engine control. By then, we’ll have engaged Gideon and there should be minimal enemy presence in that part of the ship – but keep your guard up. You’ll only have minutes to get out. I’ll raise you on the comm link when we’re out of time.”

“I’m not worried about my part.”

The Mandalorian looked at her, hearing the question in her voice. “The foundling won’t be in any danger.”

“I think you’re underestimating the Moff’s determination.”

“Perhaps you are underestimating our ability to protect him. We will die for him, if it comes to that. Some already have.”

Cara found herself believing his sincerity. _But will that be enough?_ She said, “Thank you for agreeing to help.”

The Mandalorian looked back at the ship. “It was the Armorer’s decision.” After a moment, he said, “We were brothers, once. We were inseparable.”

Cara knew he wasn’t talking about the Armorer. She imagined two young boys wearing oversized Mandalorian helmets with scrap metal tied around their chests, chasing each other around the dusty streets of some Outer Rim territory with toy blasters in hand. Both dreaming of the day when they would earn the legendary Mandalorian armor, when they would swear the Creed that would both liberate and restrict them for the rest of their lives. She wondered if this Mandalorian had been a foundling as well. “So what happened?”

“We grew apart. Din had always been more of a loner, but after the Purge, most of us recognized the strength in numbers and came together to ensure the survival of the Covert. He never did. He was fiercely loyal to the tribe and to our Creed, but he wouldn’t hesitate to work with former enemies and rivals if he thought it would further his goals. He spent more time above-ground, traveling through hyperspace to track down bounties in the service of Imps, than he did in the tunnels with the Covert.”

“Sounds more like survival than anything else.”

“Maybe. But I distrusted him because of it.” A pause. “Perhaps I’ll ask him about it one day.”

The Mandalorian slid back from the ridge and stood up. He said unexpectedly, “You are a loyal friend. To the foundling, and to Din. When this is over, I’d like to know how an ex-rebel shock trooper fell in with a strange green creature and a Mandalorian.”

Cara could only nod. The Mandalorian turned and started walking down the slope to where she knew the rest of the Covert was waiting.

“Hey,” she called after him. “I have no idea how to impersonate a stormtrooper.”

He responded without breaking his stride. “Just don’t hit anything on your first attempt.”

* * *

“You can put an end to this.”

Moff Gideon’s voice sounded fuzzy and distant to Din’s ears. Darkness crowded the edges of his vision and it was a constant struggle to remain conscious. He had long ago lost the ability to stand on his own and now swayed in the chains. A constant, excruciating pain radiated from his shoulder blades.

His armor lay in a heap in the corner of the cell. They had stripped him of his Beskar, finally – but left his helmet on – in order to beat him with clubs and stun batons. They had broken ribs and every breath drawn was a fractured shard of agony.

All he knew now was pain. Pain, and the ever-present specter of Gideon, asking him about the Asset a thousand times.

He never gave an answer – at least, not one that satisfied Gideon – but he thought of the foundling often. When they would leave him alone for a few hours and he would slip off into a half-conscious, fevered state, he saw the child waddling after him in his small robe, reaching out with tiny green claws. He saw him playing with the kids on Sorgan, chasing one-eyed frogs and being chased by Omera’s daughter – Winta – in return. He saw him with his arm extended, eyes half-closed in concentration, as a fully grown mudhorn a hundred times his size levitated in the air above, bellowing with murderous intent. He saw all of the miraculous things that the child had proven capable of in the short time they had been together, and he thought, _ni kar’tayl gai sa’ad._

Din knew that Gideon had no idea where to even begin looking for the foundling, and that he was growing increasingly impatient.

Now he stood in front of him with a vibroblade in his hand.

Gideon grabbed the cowl around Din’s neck and jerked him forward. A pulsating pain shot across his shoulders. “Tell me. Where has the shock trooper taken the Asset?”

“I…don’t know.”

He didn’t. They could be anywhere in the galaxy by now. That thought alone sustained him.

Gideon studied him. “You’re lying. You have not been as helpful as I had hoped you would be, and I grow weary of this. I was willing to offer you a clean death, but it seems you prefer the alternative and I am happy to oblige.” 

He leaned close. “First, we’ll take off your helmet to allow the IT-O to invade your mind. Don’t worry, you’ll only have moments to grieve its loss before the real pain begins. The droid will comb all of your memories, every single intimate and significant experience that has made you who you are today, all of the people you’ve known and loved and lost. It will sift through each and every grain of your life, searching for anything of value to me, destroying what is not. With every passing second, you’ll lose another part of yourself, and you’ll be painfully, _agonizingly_ aware but unable to do a single thing about it. And when your body is nothing more than a rotting husk, a shell of a creature once capable of intelligent thought, I’ll put a blaster round through your brain and put you out of your misery.”

A mind probe. Din had half-expected that to come earlier.

“But first,” Gideon said, “A parting gift.”

He slid his blade in between his prisoner’s ribs, slowly, _slowly_ , and Din gritted his teeth. The pain was agonizing. When he felt the blade twist inside of him, he couldn’t bite back the scream.

Cruelly, the Moff pushed the blade further until only the hilt was showing. Warm, coppery blood filled Din’s mouth.

When the blade was savagely yanked free, merciful darkness finally took him.

* * *

Gideon held the bloody vibroblade in his hand, staring at the unconscious Mandalorian in frustration. He fought the urge to stab him again, to rip the helmet off and slit the man’s throat from ear to ear.

The IT-O hovering nearby extended its pronged arm to the prisoner’s neck once again. “Blood pressure is dropping. Vitals are elevated.”

“Get a nurse droid. Once he’s stabilized, we’ll start the mind probe.”

The Inquisitor and the IT-O left the cell and Gideon wiped the blade on his cloak. He had not expected to obtain information quickly, but he was surprised that the Mandalorian had withstood such pain. Was there a chance that he really didn’t know where the Asset was?

Gideon would find out soon enough – and Din Djarin only needed to be barely alive for what would come next. He turned to leave and was surprised to see a stormtrooper commander hovering in the corridor.

“Sir, there’s something you should see.”

“What?”

“The Mandalorians have arrived. They want to talk to you.”

Gideon’s frustration was instantly replaced with intrigue and he quickened his pace as they strode down the corridor. His mind was racing. “And the shock trooper. Is she with them?”

“No. But they say that they have something you want.”

“Get some troopers down here to guard the cell,” Gideon said. “This could be a ploy to rescue the Mandalorian. The shock trooper could be on her way here as we speak.”

“If she’s stupid enough to try, she won’t get far.”

They reached the turn-off for the command bridge and the stormtrooper slowed, anticipating Gideon’s destination, but instead Gideon pushed forward toward the hanger bay.

“Open the doors,” he said.

“Sir…?“

“Open the doors,” he repeated coldly, and the commander called it in on his comm link. They rounded the corner and Gideon nearly collided with a stormtrooper heading in the opposite direction. The trooper recoiled and continued on his way without so much as an apology. In other circumstances Gideon might not have let that slide, but he had more important matters to attend to.

In a matter of minutes, stormtroopers had flanked the sides of the hanger bay, blasters raised to confront whatever waited on the other side of the doors.

The large clamshell doors peeled apart to reveal a dozen Mandalorians standing on the ground in front of the ship. They were armed but did not have their weapons drawn. One Mandalorian, much larger than the others, stood at the front of the group.

Gideon walked onto the landing ramp, stopping halfway and assessing the group. “Well, what a historic occasion. When was the last time that so many of you were above ground?”

The Mandalorian ignored the jab. “You have something that we want. One of ours. We’ve come to trade for his release.”

“And what could you possibly have to offer in return?”

“You know the answer to that. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have invited us.” The Mandalorian tossed a small object at the bottom of the landing ramp.

Gideon glanced at the tracking fob on the ground. He said, “Show me.”

The Mandalorian stepped to the side, revealing the warrior behind him. He was wearing a leather sling across his chest, and in the sling was a small green foundling with long ears.

Gideon smiled, his eyes never leaving the Asset. “I see. And what of the shock trooper? I assume she has agreed to this trade, and yet I don’t see her amongst you.”

“She did not agree.”

“You killed her, then?”

“We did what we had to do.”

“I don’t suppose you have any proof of this.”

“We didn’t come here to prove anything to you.”

“And since when are Mandalorians willing to resort to murder, to the abandonment of a foundling, even to save one of their own?”

“This foundling has brought harm to our Covert. We will never know peace until it has been taken from the planet.”

Gideon considered his options. Likely, the Mandalorians and the shock trooper were working together, acting out some desperate ploy to rescue Din Djarin – but what did it really matter, in the end? They could have the Mandalorian – or what was left of him – if they wanted him so badly. They could kill every single stormtrooper on his ship and blow up the entire godforsaken planet, for all he cared.

As long as he had a single TIE fighter and the Asset, he would have everything he needed to kick the second phase of his plan into action.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ni kar’tayl gai sa’ad.  
> I know your name as my child.


	5. The Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cara sneaks onto the Star Destroyer in search of her friend. Meanwhile, the Mandalorians face off with Moff Gideon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost at the end, guys. Hope you've enjoyed reading it half as much as I've enjoyed writing it. :)

It had been surprisingly easy – disarmingly so – to get onto the ship. There was much more activity around the Star Destroyer than the day before and Cara had casually walked in on the heels of a resupply shipment being carried aboard. It was an indication that Gideon wasn’t planning to hang around much longer, and it stressed the urgency of their mission even more.

In a surreal moment, Cara had collided with the Moff himself as she made her way to the cells. He had been hurrying toward the hanger bay and she knew that the Mandalorians had set their part of the plan into motion. For a brief moment she had considered deviating from her own plan in order to rid the galaxy of Gideon once and for all, but she knew that there was no scenario in which she did that and still escaped with Mando alive.

Now, she slowed her pace as she turned the corner. Three stormtroopers stood around a single cell at the end of a long corridor. Her finger found the trigger of the blaster rifle that she held across her chest.

“Another one?” one of the troopers asked incredulously, watching her walk toward them. “How many of us do they think it takes to guard a prisoner?”

“He’s half dead as it is.”

“It’s not to guard him,” the third trooper said irritably. “It’s to – ”

Cara raised her rifle. By the time the stormtroopers had realized what was happening, it was too late.

She glanced around to make sure there weren’t any others, then kicked the bodies away from the door of the cell and peered inside. What she saw made her heart thud heavily in her chest. The Mandalorian hung limply in chains, unconscious, unmoving. For a terrifying moment, she thought that he was dead.

“Hey, Mando,” she said urgently, but there was no response.

With a growing panic, she pulled out the small laser that the Armorer had given her and began to cut through the steel bars of the cell door. In moments, she’d created an opening just large enough to pass through.

She ran to Din. Her boots slid across the floor and she looked down to realize that she was standing in a pool of blood. _His_ blood. Bile rose in her throat. “Mando! Wake up.” 

He groaned. “Cara….”

“Yeah, it’s me, buddy. I’m going to get you out of here. Just hold on, okay?”

“You…shouldn’t…be here. Where – is…?“

“He’s with the Covert,” she replied quickly. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. “We have to get these cuffs off. Can you stand?”

He lifted his head, with effort. “Yes.”

Cara didn’t believe him and widened her stance to support his weight as she used the laser to cut through the stuncuffs. To save time, she focused on the chain connecting the bracelets. They could work on removing the rest later. It was painstakingly slow, but eventually the link broke.

Din’s knees buckled as his arms came free and he would have fallen if Cara hadn’t caught him. She had been careful to avoid the wound on his right side, but he flinched at her touch regardless. She guessed a broken rib; maybe a few. Rage swelled within her, but she pushed the emotions back down. There would be a time for that, but right now she needed to remain level-headed. There was still a long way to go to safety.

Her hands came away sticky with blood and she said nervously, “We need to stop this bleeding.”

Din offered her his cloak and she ripped a long strip off the end of it and wrapped it tightly around his torso, trying to ignore the strangled sounds of pain that he made as she did so. The pain of applying pressure on his broken ribs and wound must have been excruciating, and the cloth was a half-measure at best, but it would have to do for now.

“My armor,” he muttered, and she followed the gaze of his helmet to the corner of the cell, where a pile of Beskar sat in a discarded heap.

“We don’t have much time,” she said, grabbing the cuirass.

“It’ll be faster if you…help me.”

Cara fumbled to get the pieces of armor on her friend. This was not the time to learn how to put on Mandalorian armor and she found herself cursing its intricacy, with all of the circuitry, catches, and fasteners. The work was made even more difficult by the blunt clumsiness of the stormtrooper gloves. She could feel Din looking at her. Finally, he said, “I like…the new look.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not exactly looking _your_ best, either.” Cara peered down the corridor. “Okay, now we really need to go.”

Din staggered to the cell door. He paused to retrieve a blaster rifle from one of the dead stormtroopers, then draped an arm around her shoulders. They made slow progress down the corridor – the Mandalorian was breathing raggedly, nearly dead weight against her. Cara prayed that they wouldn’t encounter any stormtroopers. If all was going according to plan, most of the action would be at the front of the ship by now.

“There’s an escape hatch just around the corner up here,” she said. “Usually it’s used to launch escape pods but seeing as we’re docked on a planet right now, we can use it as our way out.”

“We’re not…leaving.” 

“What?”

“We have to kill Gideon.”

Cara stopped in her tracks and looked at him incredulously. “You can’t be serious.”

“As long as he lives, he’ll send hunters after the child. He has plans for him.”

“What plans?”

“Harness his power…or extract it, somehow. He’s not going to stop…not until he’s dead.”

“Look, I want to protect the kid as much as you do, but you are literally leaving a trail of blood in your wake. You’re weak, and you’re hurt, and you can barely walk. You have broken bones, and probably internal bleeding. Even if there _was_ a way to get close to him while somehow evading the hundreds of stormtroopers on this ship, you’d be dead from blood loss before we got the chance to do anything.” Cara paused, listening to the chatter on the comm link in her ear. “And – we don’t have a lot of time left.”

“What…?”

“The Mandalorians are keeping Gideon and his troopers distracted right now, but it’s only a matter of time before he figures out what’s going on.”

“I thought…the kid was with the Mandalorians.”

Cara swallowed. “He is.”

“He – “

A tinny voice came over the comm link in Cara’s ear and she held up a hand to silence him. The large Mandalorian’s voice crackled over the line. “Gideon just sent troopers to get Djarin. You’re out of time.”

She looked at Din, who was staring at her. His expression behind the impassive helmet was as unknowable as ever, but somehow, she could _feel_ the rage emanating from him. Someone in such bad shape had no business being so angry. “You can chew me out later, okay? There are troopers coming. We have to hurry.”

In a tightly controlled voice, Din said, “You need to get me out there.”

“I need to get you medical attention,” Cara replied, but her confidence was faltering. If Din was right – and she had no reason to suspect otherwise – and Gideon was acting out of his own self-interests, then he would be even more motivated than she had thought possible.

She might have asked the Mandalorians to walk into a death trap – with the foundling in their arms.

* * *

It was late afternoon, and thick clouds had swirled into the atmosphere. The winds had picked up, hinting of a coming system. On the arid, desert planet of Nevarro, weather typically took the form of sand and dust storms, and even now, dark shadows could be seen forming along the distant horizon. Gideon wasn’t concerned. The standoff would be over long before the storm arrived.

The air was thick with tension as everyone waited for the stormtroopers to return with the Mandalorian. No one spoke, and the Covert stood as still as statues at the bottom of the landing ramp.

The Asset looked small and unthreatening bundled in the arms of the Mandalorian, but Gideon knew better. Without taking his eyes off of it, he spoke to the commander beside him in a low voice. “Tell the doctor to prepare his room. Then take a contingent of troopers and flank the Covert from behind. I want them surrounded.” 

The commander nodded and left.

“What’s taking so long?” the large Mandalorian asked suspiciously. 

“It’s a large ship. And your friend is not moving very quickly right now.”

The Mandalorian didn’t respond.

“Tell me,” Gideon said. “Who is leading the tribe these days? The Armorer must be incredibly busy now with all of the armor and helmets recovered from your dead these past few months.”

The Mandalorian spat in Gideon’s direction. “Unlike Imperial scum, we are capable of governing ourselves without waiting for direction from some supreme leader. I know the Empire would like to think that they decimated us during the Purge, but we live on regardless of the state of our leadership.”

“You are speaking of Bo-Katan,” Gideon replied, and was about to say more, but his commander returned to his side.

“The Mandalorian has escaped,” the stormtrooper said in a low voice. “The shock trooper must have infiltrated the ship. Looks like they went out through the rear hatch. I have troopers looking for them now.”

Gideon nodded, unsurprised. On the ground, his stormtroopers had encircled the Mandalorians from behind and now they began to close in, blaster rifles drawn and aimed.

The Mandalorians, realizing that they were surrounded, drew their own weapons. The large Mandalorian hefted a heavy blaster cannon in his hands and pointed it directly at Gideon.

“Where is he?” the Mandalorian asked.

“You and I both know that I should be asking _you_ that question,” Gideon replied. “But frankly, I don’t care. You’re welcome to whatever is left of him. I will, however, be taking the Asset.”

The large Mandalorian gave a signal to the group and they swept aside their cloaks to reveal jetpacks strapped to their backs. Cold fear gripped Gideon’s chest. His stormtroopers had no such tech, and by the time they scrambled their fighters, the Mandalorians would be long gone. With the Asset.

“Stop them!” Gideon shouted, and at once the air was alight with red pulses of blaster fire. From the sky, the Mandalorians fired back, striking down several troopers with deadly accuracy. The large Mandalorian shot his cannon into a cluster of stormtroopers, incinerating them in a fiery blast that shook the earth.

The commander reached for Gideon in an attempt to get him to safety but Gideon shrugged him off, pulling his own blaster pistol and running down the landing ramp.

The Asset was not going to get away again.

He scanned the sky, found the Mandalorian carrying the Asset, aimed carefully – _so carefully,_ because the Asset was cradled against his chest – and fired.

There was a moment where the Mandalorian seemed to hover in midair, unmoving, and Gideon dropped his shoulder and prepared to fire again. Then a puff of smoke erupted from his jetpack and he crashed back down to earth. Gideon was halfway to him before he had hit the ground.

The fallen Mandalorian wore armor made of durasteel rather than Beskar, and it had not stopped the blaster round from going through both his thigh and the jetpack. As he struggled to sit up, Gideon raised his pistol and fired a shot straight into his helmet. He collapsed back down to the ground, dead.

Fortunately, the Mandalorian had landed on his back and his body had shielded the Asset during the fall. Now, the green creature stared up at Gideon with a slightly stunned expression on its face, ears pointed downward. Its mouth moved but no sound came out.

Gideon holstered his weapon and reached for it. Suddenly a powerful force slammed into his chest and sent him flying backwards. He landed heavily in the dirt, his head ringing. He knew immediately that he had been hit by a blaster round, but fortunately his own armor had prevented penetration.

He grabbed his pistol but a second, well-aimed shot knocked it out of his hand.

Gideon looked up to find a Mandalorian staring down at him.

Not just a Mandalorian. _The_ Mandalorian. He now stood between Gideon and the Asset, and he had a blaster rifle aimed straight at Gideon’s heart.


	6. The Last Stand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mandalorian is finally out of Gideon's prison cell, but can he save the foundling in time?

Din kept his weapon trained on Gideon as the Moff got to his feet slowly.  
“I’m impressed,” Gideon said. “I figured you would be dead by now.”

Din knew he was halfway there, but the adrenaline coursing through his veins was keeping the exhaustion at bay. He and Cara had reached the scene of the confrontation as the Covert had taken to the air, just in time to watch in horror as the Mandalorian carrying the child had plummeted to earth.

Normally he would have hit his mark with ease, especially at such a close range. But Din was unsteady, feeling the effects of blood loss, and shooting from a place of desperation instead of with controlled focus. His aim had not been perfect, but it had been good enough. His first shot had knocked Gideon to the ground, and the second had relieved him of his weapon.

He was aware of the battle slowing around him. The Mandalorians had returned to earth, and now they positioned themselves behind Din and Gideon. On the other side, hundreds of stormtroopers lined up with their weapons drawn. It appeared that an unspoken ceasefire had been acknowledged by both sides; and that they understood that the battle would now be determined by the two men standing in between them.

Cara approached and without taking his eyes off Gideon, Din said to her, “Take the kid.”

She hesitated, as if about to argue, then shouldered her rifle. Gideon watched her pick up the foundling and walk back toward the relative safety of the Covert. “Ah, the shock trooper disguised as a stormtrooper,” he said. “How clever.”

He slowly shook out his cloak and clasped his hands behind him. “Well. What happens now, Din Djarin? Are you going to kill me?”

“Yes.”

“No conversation? No parting words?”

“We’ve spent enough time together.”

“You can’t keep him safe forever, you know. There are hundreds of tracking fobs out there. Even if you kill me, eventually someone will come for him.”

Maybe. But not today. Din’s finger closed around the trigger just as Gideon swiftly brought his hands out from behind him. He was holding something – a small, dark piece of metal. The hilt of a weapon.

There was a high-pitched hum, a brilliant flash of light – and then a powerful surge of heat that swept over Din’s hand, burning his fingers through his gloves. The barrel of his blaster rifle dropped harmlessly to the ground, cleanly severed from the rest of the weapon.

Gideon stood in front of him, holding a fearsome black blade sheathed with Force energy.

He was holding the Darksaber.

Din didn’t have time to consider the significance of this new development because suddenly Gideon was lunging at him. He backed up, reaching for the knife in his shin guard before remembering that it wasn’t there. He was facing an enraged Moff with a lightsaber, and he didn’t have a single weapon.

They circled each other warily, Gideon holding the Darksaber in a steady, outstretched hand. Din had trained with longswords as a youth but had never wielded such a weapon, and he watched his opponent carefully to see what he would do. He knew that Beskar was one of the few metals that could withstand a lightsaber strike, but it wasn’t something he wanted to put to the test.

Gideon attacked him again with a ferocious swing of the blade. Din dropped low, sweeping his leg under his opponent’s feet and knocking him to the ground. A sharp jolt of pain shot through his body as his ribs protested the sudden movement, but he ignored it and lunged forward, pressing the advantage. At the last second, Gideon swung the lightsaber wildly and Din had to jump back to avoid it.

The Moff advanced with another arcing attack and Din was once again forced to dodge. He managed to avoid taking the brunt of the hit, but his reflexes were slowed by pain and exhaustion and the blade caught him on the side of the helmet. While the plasma blade bounced off the Beskar with a metallic clang, the impact knocked him off balance and he fell to his knees, his head ringing. Before he could recover, Gideon drove a boot into his injured side and blinding pain shot through his body.

Din collapsed to the ground in agony, struggling to draw in a breath. Black spots danced in front of his vision.

Gideon leveled the Darksaber at his head. “Get up.”

Din got to his knees unsteadily. Blood had soaked through his clothing and seeped onto the ground beside him, darkening the sandy grit.

It had been a pathetically short fight, but Din didn’t have the strength to attack again, to evade another blow, even to stand. He knew the Mandalorians wouldn’t interfere with what came next out of respect – they would allow him to have a warrior’s death.

He only hoped the child wasn’t watching.

Gideon raised the Darksaber, preparing to strike. “Goodbye, Din Djarin.”

Din closed his eyes.

He heard the hum of the Darksaber whistling through the air. He held his breath and lifted his head, waiting for the final blow.

It never came.

Instead, there was a moment of impossible stillness – and then a powerful blast of air that surged past Din, nearly knocking him to the ground.

He opened his eyes.

Gideon was no longer standing in front of him. He had been flung back nearly fifty yards into the landing gear of his ship and was lying on his back, either unconscious or stunned. The Darksaber lay on the ground beside him.

The next thing he realized was that the several hundred stormtroopers who had surrounded the Mandalorians were gone.

No – not gone. They, too, had been blown back toward the ship with tremendous force. Bodies lay strewn across the landing ramp, against the side of the ship, piled on top of each other in the blowing dust.

The foundling.

Din turned to the Mandalorians. He saw Cara, her helmet off, running toward him. She held the child in her arms. With a tremendous force of will, he struggled to his feet. The pain in his side flared and nausea threatened to overwhelm him. He started toward the ship, but Cara grabbed his arm.

“No,” she said. “I just watched you nearly get your head cut off. You had your chance, and you blew it.”

“Someone…needs to – ”

“Yes, but that someone isn’t you. At least, not today.”

Paz came up behind Cara. “She’s right,” he said. “That…well, whatever that was bought us some time, but not much. There are hundreds of stormtroopers here. They’ll regroup soon, and when they do, there’s no way the dozen of us will be able to repel them. You’ll live to fight another day – if we can get you to a nurse droid in time. Hell, I’ll help you kill him tomorrow if that’s what you want. But right now, we need to get out of here.”

In frustration, Din stared at Gideon in the distance. He had pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and several stormtroopers were running toward him. One of them had retrieved the Darksaber.

The window was closing, but he could still end this. Right now.

“The kid,” Cara said quietly, and with a pang of guilt Din followed her gaze to the child in the sling. He lay still, eyes closed, brow furrowed. A tiny droplet of sweat on his forehead. Had that ever happened before? She said, “He doesn’t look well. We need to get him out of here.”

Din nodded. Another wave of dizziness swept over him and he stumbled, simultaneously feeling the urge to vomit and to pass out.

Distantly he heard someone say, “You’re going to have to carry – ”

And then, nothing.

* * *

The stormtroopers guarding the Razor Crest were gone by the time Cara and the Mandalorians returned to the ship – likely they had been called back to the Star Destroyer when the fighting had broken out. They approached with their weapons drawn, anyway. To Cara’s surprise, a quick diagnostic scan of the ship revealed that the troopers hadn’t tampered with any of its functions. It would still fly.

Once the ship had been secured, the large Mandalorian had sent the rest of the Covert back to the enclave. He would return, he told them, once he had ensured that Cara, Din, and the foundling had successfully left the planet.

“Tell the Armorer what has happened,” he had instructed them. “She’ll know what to do.”

Now, Cara leaned against the wall of the med bay, pulling off her armor and tossing each piece out of the open door of the ship while the Mandalorian removed Din’s cuirass and pulled up the folds of clothing to expose his most obvious injury. It was horrific – a large, jagged wound, obviously caused by a thrumming vibroblade. Even the copious amount of blood surrounding the cut, both dried and fresh, wasn’t enough to hide the angry bruising that ran the length of his torso. Definitely a few broken ribs. Above the wound were two matching burn marks – the kind made by an electrostaff. And that was just the part that Cara could see.

It made her sick.

The Mandalorian withdrew a small vial from his shin guard and let a few drops fall directly onto the wound.

“What is that?” Cara asked. “Bacta?”

“Yes,” he replied, placing a fresh bandage against the injury. “It won’t heal him completely, but it’ll slow any internal bleeding and buy him some time until he can receive proper medical attention. Do you have somewhere you can take him?”

“I know a place. We can lie low there for a while.”

The Mandalorian glanced at the foundling, laying in his makeshift bassinet in a corner of the room. “What about him?”

She followed his gaze. “I’ve never seen him like this. Mando said that using his…powers…seems to drain him. I don’t know how long he’ll be out.”

Cara still didn’t understand what she had seen out there on the battlefield. The child had, using only his mind, hurled hundreds of bodies through the air with tremendous force. Only the Jedi were known to possess such abilities, but this child was too young to know anything of the ancient Order.

On the cot, Din jerked awake in a sudden panic. He groaned and tried to sit up, but the Mandalorian quickly leaned over and pushed him back down.

“Not yet,” he said. “Not unless you want to undo all of my hard work.”

“Paz….”

“Hey, brother.”

Cara stood next to the bed and looked at him, trying not to sound concerned. “How are you feeling, buddy?”

“I’ll live. The child?”

She shook her head. “He hasn’t woken up yet.”

Din stared at her and the other Mandalorian – Paz, he’d called him – as if trying to form words. When he spoke, there was an unexpected anger in his voice. “You risked too much. You should have left me there.” To die, was the unspoken implication.

“You shouldn’t have allowed yourself to get captured in the first place. By an Imp, no less.”

Din didn’t argue that point. Instead he asked, “Tiber?“

“He’s dead.”

Upon hearing that, Din sank back onto the cot and Cara could tell that the fight had gone out of him. Paz leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and studied him intently. He said, “We knew what was at risk. We did what we did because of the foundling and we would do it again. This is the Way.”

After a pause, Din nodded resignedly. “This is the Way.”

“You know what you must do now.” Din didn’t reply and Paz said, echoing the words of the Armorer, “You must raise the child as your own and return him to his own kind.”

Way to break the news gently, Cara thought, and held her breath. To her surprise, Din simply nodded as if he had already known – or had decided for himself a long time ago – and said quietly, “Yes.”

He pushed himself up with effort. “The tunnels aren’t safe anymore. You’ll have to relocate the Covert.”

Paz nodded. “Off planet, likely.”

Cara stared at him with dismay. She had been painfully aware of the danger that the tribe had taken on by agreeing to help rescue Din, but until this moment she hadn’t understood the true commitment, the sacrifice that her request had required of them.

She asked dumbly, “You have a ship?”

“Yes. Even if we didn’t, I wouldn’t trust this piece of scrap metal you’ve been flying around the galaxies in.”

Din said, “You have before.”

“That was a long time ago. I was younger and dumber. And your ship was in better shape.”

“So were you.”

Paz chuckled and shook his head. “Not enough action these days to keep me in fighting shape.”

“You could travel with us,” Cara said. “There always seems to be plenty of action to go around.”

He looked at her. “I doubt you’d need my help.”

She felt a strange, unfamiliar heat rising in her cheeks. “You’ve never seen me fight.”

“I don’t need to.”

Din listened to the interaction without comment, his helmet tilted slightly. Paz seemed to become aware of the attention because he cleared his throat and said to him, “Moff Gideon has the Darksaber.”

“I noticed.”

“You’re talking about the lightsaber?” Cara asked. “It has a name?”

“Yes. The Darksaber was created by a Mandalorian named Tarre Vizlsa. It’s been a symbol of leadership for our clan for over a thousand years.”

“The Mandalorians created a lightsaber?” Cara asked, confused. “Isn’t that a Jedi weapon?”

“Tarre Vizsla was also a Jedi.”

That was interesting. Cara wasn’t an expert on Mandalorian history but even she knew that ever since the Mandalorian-Jedi War, the two sides had been diametrically opposed to one another. “Okay, but how did Gideon get his hands on it?”

The two Mandalorians glanced at each other. Paz said slowly, “As far as anyone knows, it’s been with Bo-Katan ever since the destruction of the Duchess. According to our custom, one can only obtain the Darksaber by defeating its previous owner in combat.”

“So…you think Moff Gideon killed Bo-Katan and stole the Darksaber? To what – rule over the Mandalorians?”

“He has much greater ambitions than that,” Din said.

A strong gust of wind picked up suddenly, blowing sand and grit into the open doors of the ship, and Paz stood up. He offered a hand to Din. “Storm’s coming in. You need to go. Are you well enough to pilot the ship?”

“Yes,” Din said, ignoring the proffered hand and getting to his feet with difficulty.

“We’ll send word once we’ve reestablished the Covert. In the meantime, try not to get yourself captured or killed.”

Din nodded, hesitated. He was a man of few words, and Cara could tell that he was struggling to find the right ones now. Finally, he said simply, “Thank you.”

Paz pressed a few buttons on his vambrace and his jetpack whirred to life. “Ke nu’jurkadir sha Mando’ade.”

They watched the large Mandalorian walk down the landing ramp of the Razor Crest and fly off in the direction of the town, and then Cara went to the foundling while Din raised the ramp and began to prepare the ship for departure.

When she had returned to the cockpit, she found him sitting in the captain’s chair, running his hands over the controls as if to refamiliarize himself with them. She wondered if he was surprised to be alive, what the last few days had been like for him. She wondered if she would ever know.

“I was thinking of this place,” she said, though he hadn’t asked. “Quiet. Friendly people, decent weather. Plenty of spotchka. Lots of playmates for the kid.”

Din switched on the engines and the ship roared to life. He looked at her and nodded. “Sounds perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ke nu’jurkadir sha Mando’ade.  
> Don’t mess with the Mandalorians.
> 
> Well, this is it - the last chapter! Thanks for coming along on this journey with me...my first foray into fan fiction has been exciting, daunting, and enlightening, to say the least. If you enjoyed this story, please check out my next WIP, The Shape of Vengeance, which promises to be much longer and also introduces an O.C. (oh boy).
> 
> As always, any feedback / comments are SO welcome. :)


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